The Other Side of the Story and I'm Still Pissed

It's important to me to show both sides of this story.

Below, I posted a link to a website about No Kill Shelters and their shocking revelation that HSUS (Humane Society of the United States) and AHS (Animal Humane Society of Minnesota) had both recently euthanized a large number of animals, for basically, no good reason.

I was particularly distressed about AHS.

When I was a little girl, I lived in Minnesota and we adopted two cats from AHS. One of them went on to win a contest called: The All-American Glamour Kitty Contest, which was sponsored by a Glamour Kitty Cat Litter. I was just 10 years old, at the time.

Needless to say, from that time onward, I always had a warm place in my heart for AHS. It was the first charity I ever donated money to and I never stopped donating. Last year, when I had my Last Will & Testament prepared, I decided to donate a portion of my ESTATE to AHS.

Today, I read this article about AHS "humanely euthanizing" 120 cats from a hoarding situation because some of the cats had: URI's (a COLD), some had herpes virus (a COLD-ish), FIV (NOT CONTAGIOUS unless through a deep, penetrating bite wound to another cat) and RINGWORM (ok, contagious to everyone, not fun to deal with or treat and the tests take two weeks to get a positive or negative hit).

For this, ALL the cats were KILLED.

I have a cat with FIV. It's NOT a big deal and my SIX other cats are JUSt FINE, thank you.

We had to deal with Ringworm in our tiny rescue group and we survived it. On a big scale, such as AHS had to deal with, it's a different story, BUT it shouldn't be the reason to just KILL THE CATS.

Same thing for URI's and Herpes---I heard that other rescue groups offered to help and even with that AHS didn't want to risk putting those cats into the population, Yet, if they got ONE cat that was sick with any of the above and it was deemed "adoptable" from an age and personality standpoint, they'd save it.

They also have an "open door" policy to take every animal in to the shelter, regardless of health or age or behavior issues. Then, THEY KILL THE ONES that don't make the cut. I'd like to know what lengths they go to to help out the animals or do they just pick the nice cute ones that are easy to move out and KILL all the rest without giving them any chance at all, then blame it on overcrowding, not enough funding or staff?

I really have a problem with what they did to those cats. Many of them could be ALIVE today and staring a new life with either a new family or at least getting well enough for that second chance.

Yes, it would have COST MONEY and COST HOURS and been DIFFICULT to manage, but it could have been done, it would have taught them better ways to manage this in the future and those animals would be ALIVE.

I'm not rich, but with any luck, my Estate will be worth a few bucks when I die. I certainly don't want any of that money to go to a place that claims to be so good to animals but who seems to just pick out the nice ones and dump the tough cases out with the trash.